Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s gospel passage continues the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel. Here Jesus challenges the people to move beyond the simple rules of the Ten Commandments into a fuller biblical justice. The subject of today’s passage concerns the commandment against killing. This is familiar to us as it would have been to the people whom Jesus addressed at the time. And most of the people listening to Jesus, like most of us hearing his words today, would say that we are not guilty of breaking this commandment.
It would be easy enough to hear Jesus’ words today and think that Jesus had raised the bar a notch, that he had made the standard of a holy life that much harder. While in most circumstances it is fairly easy not to kill someone, it is much harder not to get angry and not to call people names. It is difficult to seek reconciliation with those whom we have had a disagreement. Why should Jesus be so much more demanding than the Ten Commandments, which have held an important place in the lives of many since the time of Moses?
I suggest that evaluating Jesus’ words here as simply more demanding or more difficult would be misleading. As in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, here Jesus is trying to call us beyond the simple command of not killing. He is calling us to what John Paul II called “a fuller biblical justice.” In the words of theologian Glen Stassen, this is a “transforming initiative.” Jesus wants his followers to move beyond the ease of following rules. He wants them to move into a Christian form of life, which is guided by rules but seeks to transcend the rules. Jesus wants his followers to live in the spirit of the law and not simply the letter of the law.
Alas! Seeking to live the spirit of the law in regard to anger will surely take more time, effort, persistence, prayer, and openness to grace than following the letter of the law in regard to killing. Not killing someone is easy to do on a daily basis... but not getting angry? Can even a week pass without our getting angry or frustrated? Our consolation is that if Jesus calls us to this, it is because he believes it is possible to live this way, and he will give us the help we need in order to live in this way. It may not happen all at once, but Jesus believes in the possibility of our transformation to a fuller biblical justice. And with his life, death, and resurrection, we have been granted a model that is also our hope and our salvation.
Today, take some time to examine one area of your life where you are struggling with anger or where you are in need of reconciliation. How is Jesus calling you to a fuller justice in this relationship? Pray for guidance in this situation, and make a specific resolution as to how you will prevent or control your anger the next time this problem arises. May Jesus’ call transform our lives, one challenge at a time.
- Maria Morrow